Islamic insurgents suspected of fatal shootings in Thailand
Updated
Thai police suspect Islamic insurgents were responsible for shooting five people dead during a spate of attacks across Thailand's mainly-Muslim south.
Almost four thousand people have died in the conflict since the insurgency flared up again in early 2004, but an Australian authority on southern Thailand says the rebel leaders' motives are still unclear.
Presenter: Linda Mottram.
Speaker: Dr Marc Askew, University of Melbourne & the Prince of Songkhla University, Pattani
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ASKEW: It depends on the criteria, as you say, how do you turn the tide of a multi-headed insurgency? I would see it that we don't just have ideologically driven insurgents here. The leadership we don't know above the district level, we still don't know. When I say we, I mean that we are unable to find it from the information that we can gain from the authorities or others. But there is a sort of comprehensive disorder here and I suppose that if they were able to grapple the insurgency, then they could then nip the bud in the dynamics that's driving political killings and opportunistic killings.
But then again, I think it is very much incremental. Every military officer that I speak to and even villagers who keep a tab on events down there generally say it's a long, long time before things will be reduced, that is to say, when killings are not happening by insurgents as such. Legal killings are always happening in other provinces to, but we have got a confusion here. Insurgents are also for hire as hit men. One day they could do a bombing that's relating to an ideological opposition to the Thai state, and another day they might get some pocket money for knocking off the opposition of a politician.
MOTTRAM: And the international dimension here, because that's the whole new thing, isn't it, since early 2000s. Is there a real threat that what's going on internationally can still feed the insurgency in the south?
ASKEW: Well, there's no doubt that this is a new insurgency in its ideological complexion. It's often said as a cliche, that oh, this has been going on for 100 years since the annexation of the three provinces in 1902. Well in fact, that is wrong information anyway, that the idea that there is a continuity. Yes, there is a degree of continuity there if you look at it from a birds eye view, but once you consider the propaganda materials, the information from the captured insurgents themselves that I have spoken to.
The key element that drives it, that legitimises it, that is used in insurgent recruitment is Islam is in danger, that is our Islam that is, Pattani Islam when I say, Pattani I mean the space of the old culture region. I would call it a culture-political region of the three provinces.
So that gives you a link into how say events such as, for example, Israel's attacks on Palestine and vice-versa and other events might be interpreted to gain some legitimacy. The idea that Malay Muslims in the borderland, a part of a larger world community and that they certainly follow these events.
But it has been part of the climate in which people think, but that's in terms of its normative ideological dimension, in terms of its logistical linking with other forms of jihadist forms of terrorism. There is no evidence that a. that they will accept it and b. they consider themselves to be part of a worldwide... Jihad language is very clearly used, but the information that I have from a variety of sources is that it's certainly clearly an Islamised mode of creating solidarity, but I don't see it as having any demonstrable linkages, say for example, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines or JI in Indonesia.
